art in the real world

My daughter is getting married in a few weeks, and weddings are a good time to remember your art skills. We use art for everything. What color should the bridesmaids wear; remember, it must coordinate with the groomsmen and the bride's dress. My daughter choose a red dress to be married in. So the dresses must work well with red. But not just red, a deep cranberry red. Light green wouldn't work well, nor orange. What were those analagous colors again?

Working with a flower arrangement means finding colors that not only fit the theme, but again go well with the dress choices and each other.

What colors will the tablecloths be? How shall we decorate the hall? The gazebo? Should they be symmetrical or asymmetrical decorations?

How will we design the photography? The bride is a foot shorter than everyone else in the wedding party, totally out of proportion with the rest. What can we do to design a good composition?

What we learn in art class, we use over and over again in life. Composition, color, proportion, balance.... These skills make our lives easier and more self relient.

What's a viewfinder?

A viewfinder is a piece of paper with a window cut out of it, that is the same shape as the paper you are going to draw on. When you look through a viewfinder with one eye, you only see through the hole. The rest of the world is cut off from your view. This way the artist can create a composition by moving the image within the viewfinder. If you don't like what you see, move it around until it looks right. Then draw what you see on your paper. Viewfinders help to block out information you don't need.

6th Grade Art Studio with Mrs. Davis

6th grade Art Studio students are beginning a unit on abstract art and composition. Abstract art is art that is distorted or exaggerated but taken from a realistic art source. We will look at Georgia O'Keefe's flower paintings, which take an extreme close-up view of flowers. By blowing up the flowers to fill the page or blowing them up further so that only a part of them fit on the page, the flowers become distorted , focusing on the colors and design elements rather than the subject matter. Students will look at silk flowers and photos of flowers through a viewfinder, designing a composition that explodes off the page in the style of Georgia O'Keefe. They will practice a variety of techniques with oil pastels, including working with oil to create an painting effect by melting the pastels together.

Success!!

Finally logged in! Can't keep up with Mrs. Davis' prolific postings, but have been revising ParkerArt for classroom use. The 6th graders are now working on a thematic project based on trees, and the newly learned Art Elements. Each student is creating their own "Element-tree" that focuses on using a variety of art element types and using compositional balance and movement. Kids are choosing their own media, which lets me learn more about them as artists and see what their experience and preferences are. The 7th graders are learning about art from medieval Europe in preparation for a unit on Renassaince art, proportion, and perspective. We are using the computer lab to view great online resources and will be creating gothic figure sculptures from paper mache. More later...time to go to school!
Ms. Ropple

Technical Difficulties

Ms. Ropple is having some technical difficulties with posting to this blog. In the meantime, check out what is happening with her classes by going to parkerart.homestead.com.  It's a fantastic website for research as well as keeping up to date with what your children are doing.

Thank you parents

Thank you to all the parents who came for open house last night. It was wonderful to meet you and to let you know about our plans for the year. We had a delightful response to our blog and promises of multitudes of "good junk" for our junk boxes. We hope you'll continue to watch what your children are doing in art as the year progresses, and take time to talk to them about the choices they make in these projects.
In art, it's all about choices and problem solving and how can we get the world to see what we are trying to express.

Elements and Principles of Art

We spend a great deal of time going over elements and principles of art with both the sixth and the seventh grade classes. Elements and principles are a language of art, a way to talk to someone about a painting or sculpture without just saying , "Yup, I like it" or "No, that painting stinks". It gives people a common vocabulary to talk about not only the materials and the marks it is made of, but what the artist does to bring you into and around the image itself. It gives you a common language with which to judge the art, and to question the intent of the artist.

Elements of Art
These are the simple building blocks that make up a work of art. Just as molecules are built from tiny elements such as atoms, art is built from the elements we use to make marks on the page. These elements make up the way a painting is created. Elements can be lines, points, shapes, colors, textures, values, patterns or space.

Principles of Art
The artist uses principles to control the elements on the page. Principles of art allow the artist to manipulate the viewer to look at a specific spot, and then to move their eye about the image in a particular way. It may be by creating an emphasis of color in one area, or creating a rhythm of straight lines in another section. The picture may be pleasing because of the symmetrical balance used, or because your eye moves from one side to another following the spirals in the starry night. Principles of art allow a viewer to see what the artist feels is important in their art work.
Principles can include balance/ imbalance, harmony/contrast, emphasis/de-emphasis, movement/rhythm, perspective/depth, proportion, unity and variety.

Open House

Looking forward to seeing parents at open house tomorrow.

Check out this Outstanding Article in the Globe!

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/02/art_for_our_sake/

Art for Arts Sake by By Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland September 2, 2007. See why the arts are more important than just helping to boost test scores. It teaches life/work skills!

Art Studio classes with Mrs. Davis

6th grade Arts Alive are working on "Read" posters for the library. Like the professional ALA posters,

our students became the celebrities, choosing books that they would recommend to their friends. They decorated around their photos to create eye-catching posters to be hung in the library.

7th grade Art Studio classes have signed up for art mini-courses. We will be changing courses every term, signing up for a concentrated study of a particular art subject. This session, students are working with clay, starting out the year with pinch pot animals. By making two pinch pots and sealing them together, students are able to make larger hollow forms without fear of them exploding in the kiln.

8th grade Art Studio is working on creating an Elements and Principals mural for the art room. Students worked in teams to develop ways to describe the elements and principles without words. As small groups paint the murals, other students are beginning to work on independent projects, focusing on the type of art they are interested in and want to learn more about.

8th grade clay

It's a zen-like experience, working with clay. Your hands bond with the material, measuring the elasticity and the moisture level almost unconsciously, while stretching or pressing the clay into the image in your mind.

Students began the year with pinch pot gestures, creating clay images in a matter of seconds, instead of hours. They practiced making pinch pots, then closed their eyes and made them again, feeling the clay into shape rather than visualizing their progress. They made pots that represented sounds, visualized explosions or held secrets.

Our second project requires more planning than feeling. Students are designing coil pots that curl in and out of space, allowing for a vast variety of shapes and forms. Students are experimenting with ornamentation, using coils to create designs as part of the walls of their pots or for decorating the outside of them. Forms vary from mugs and candleholders to decorative bowls and vases.

7th grade with Mrs. Davis

How do we make things look real? We must become Masters of Illusion with our art. The Renaissance artists discovered some of the tricks that we still use today. By using one point perspective, overlapping and atmospheric perspective we can create images with great illusion of depth. Students are examining these art tricks and applying them to lettering, landscapes and indoor scenes.

Choosing to use perspective, or to ignore it, greatly effects your artwork. Which do you like and why? Does all art need to look real or have depth?

6th grade with Mrs. Davis

Why did people first make drawings?
Why do you like to draw?
What is it about making art that compels you to do it, even if you have to give up other things to have time for it?

6th grade students are looking at art from 50,000 years ago. Making art back then wasn't as easy as it seems. They had to make all their own tools and paints. Students are exploring cave art by making their own tools out of things they find around the classroom. They are discovering the advantages and disadvantages of individual materials as they try to make tools that create a specific type of line or texture. They are looking at how paints are made (with carbohydrates, proteins and oils as binders) and are experimenting with their own blends of homemade paint. And they are beginning to realize that the tools and paint they choose, effect the outcome of the art they make.

Welcome from Room 200!

Hello!

I am Ms. Ropple, the other half of the art department. I teach sixth grade art to groups A,C,E, and G, seventh grade art to groups I,K,M, and O, 8th grade electives (Drawing and Painting this fall, and Collage and Mixed Media this spring), and Art Studio classes to grades 6,7, and 8. It looks like all classes are bursting with enthusiasm for art and it will be a fantastic year! We hope to use this blog to share interesting art happenings, thoughts, and articles over the course of the year and hope you will check in from time to time. Thanks for checking in!

Classes in 6th and 7th grade have started the year by choosing an artist mascot and learning a little bit about their art and life. We now have the Abakanowiczs, Conegianos, Eschers, Gorkys, Istikaaryuks, Kirchners, Musschers, and Osborns! This activity helps students see what information is important to identify about an artist, to promote group identity, and to see some interesting, sometimes less known, artwork.

Welcome to Parker Art Blog

Hello!

I'm Mrs. Davis, and welcome to the Parker Art Blog.

We thought we'd start this blog as a way to talk about what is happening in our art classes as well as what we think about art and art in schools. We hope you'll enjoy finding out what your children are doing this year, as well as what we enjoy about art. Hopefully, it will spark a conversation among you and your children, or even better, a debate. This year I'll be teaching classes 62 B, 64D, 66F, 68H,72J, 74L, 76N and 78 P. I also teach Clay and Ceramics, and one section each of Art Studio for grades 6, 7 and 8. I'm looking forward to a great year!